Quotes about Union Workers

We propose a legal unit of $25,000 a year on family and individual incomes for the war's duration, in return for which union workers would accept non-negotiable Defense Bonds in lieu of all overtime pay for more than forty hours a week

Corporate Executives had urged that the laws requiring overtime pay for more than a 40 hour week be put in abeyance for the remainder of the war. Increased production was necessary for the war effort and manpower was getting short. When the Automobile Workers Union proposed that the wealthy executives also accept “patriotic” limits, the executives wanted little part in that plan. The manpower pressure was relieved when women entered the manufacturing plants but most executives and male union members and officers did not think that women could possibly be even as productive. They were wrong as women learned critical skills as they had the opportunity and out-produced the pre-war men.

Amor Towles

Strangely enough, my favorite airport is Logan Airport in Boston - but largely for sentimental reasons. My first real summer job was working as a journeyman for the airport's resident maintenance crew - a small army of union electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.

Kid Rock

I make a lot of money. I can take a pay cut. All my friends are taking pay cuts that are in the unions, that are - that are farming in Alabama or whatever it is. I can surely take a pay cut, too, not cutting down my show or - or the people that work for me, I can take a pay cut.

Ray Stannard Baker

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

Harold Daggett

These people today don’t know what a strike is. When my men hit the streets from Maine to Texas, every single port a lockdown, you know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you.

First week, be all over the news every night. Boom, boom. Second week, guys who sell cars can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week, malls start closing down. They can’t get the goods from China. They can’t sell clothes. They can’t do this. Everything in the United States comes on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren’t coming in, the steel’s not coming in, the lumber’s not coming in. They lose their job. Everybody’s hating the longshoreman now, because now they realize how important our jobs are. Now I have the president screaming at me. “I’m putting a Taft-Hartley on you.” Go ahead. Taft-Hartley means I have to go back to work for 90 days. That’s a cooling-off period. Do you think when I go back for 90 days those men are going to go to work on that pier? It’s going to cost them money, the company’s money, to pay their salaries. Well, they went from 30 moves an hour, maybe to eight. They’re going to be like this [clasps neck]. Who’s going to win here in the long run? You’re better off sitting down and let’s get a contract, and let’s move on with this world. And in today’s world, I’ll cripple you. I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means. Nobody does.

From an interview prior to the 2024 International Longshoreman Association strike. Daggett makes more than $900,000 a year as the union boss, drives a Bentley and owns a 76-foot yacht.

Rush Limbaugh

The Democrat Party coalition has now been outnumbered. The Democrats threw away their allegiance to white working-class voters. They basically discarded everybody who's white that doesn't have a college education. Well, that is a huge number of people. The Democrats instead decided to build a coalition of minorities and illegal immigrants and union workers, and they are dwindling in number, and they are localized. They are in urban areas in a few big cities. We outnumber them now, and we can cement this for a huge amount of the future.

Joe Wurzelbacher

Can a conservative work safely and soundly in a union environment - in a shop filled with union workers, activists, voters and life-long supporters of the Democrat Party? You betcha.

Thomas Sowell

Just as members of American teachers unions often send their own children to private schools, so unionized workers at government-run hospitals in Britain have insurance that allows them to go to private hospitals. In both cases, those on the inside realize how bad these institutions are, regardless of what they say to those on the outside.

Krystal Ball

And if you are going to truly stand with workers, it also means embracing solidarity, not attempting through lame talking points to pit union workers against non-union workers.

Union Workers Quotes